I held my nose closer onto the cold marble floor. My limbs were spread wide revealing my surrender. Something firm pressed against my back. Harder.
“Don’t move.” His voice was low and gruff like a mile of dirt road.
I shut my eyes and focused on the blackness. Checkered patterns swirled and red flashes pulsated behind my eyelids. There was the deafening echo of the bank manager’s heels pounding, seemingly fearless, toward one of our captors. An exchange was being made. I peeked to see her right foot pointed out in a casual stance. Her arms were surely akimbo. She took no shit. Not even from armed men.
“You’ve hurt enough people. Please leave us alone. You have what you want.”
I was paralyzed with secondhand regret. You never said that. In the movies that line was a dare. The bluff call. Show me what you’re made of, you little bitch, cuz I bet you won’t.
My chest pounded hard against the floor. Still staring just beyond my nose, a golden, speckled, and deep dark nebula emerged from a square tile, shifting under clouds of smoke. Smoke? Real or imagined?
I bravely, slowly, turned my head to meet the eyes of the bank manager, dull and fixed. They weren’t kidding after all. Suddenly my hand cupped hot blood, its smell mixing with the sanitized surface beneath it. I laid still and closed my eyes once more. Soon, this would be over.
The loud squeaks of a chorus of sneakers filled the air as they ran off. Pow! Jumps perhaps from the top of the stairs to the landing below. The force of their exit made the turnstile rhythmically beat. I turned my eyes up to see, not the scurrying of frightening people, but the intricate ceiling design. Gold leaf-covered crossbeams and positively breath-taking fleur-de-lis… Breath?
More pounding of shoes now and crackling conversation.
The tile just beyond my nose was very blurry now and the cold… the cold had already filled my still chest. I turned toward the shifting nebula and in an instant, was completely overtaken by the dark.